Been PC gaming for more years than I care to count, but your experiences, frustrations , 'weeks' getting a game to run etc are obviously because of your lack of experience and having a poorly maintained machine. Never had those experiences, and many others don't as well.
As for your reaction to the complainers, I assume you are playing RAGE on your console and are only another console fan trolling.
After 5 years of development there really should not have been any issue with video drivers, after all 'god' was in charge of the game. Complaints are legit. There are basically 2 players in the video card area, and that shouldn't be too hard for anyone of carmacks talent to deal with. If they were using drivers that weren't available to the general public to work on the game, then that is again their fault.
As for PC gaming dieing--far from it. Game sales are increasing and infact outdated consoles are hindering and holding back what really could be developed for the PC exclusively.

BTW I had virtually no problems running the game out of the box, other than the crash when retuning to the garage, and it was fixed fast. The real weakness of the game was lack of device support (other control like wheels or joysticks), an ending that was short and unsatisfying, and a linear game that was far too short given the length of time it took to make and the so called talent making it. But that is what console gamers settle for as well as enjoy and PC gamers end up with 2nd rate ports.

Yeah, well im pc gamer too, but i dont like pc gamer community at all. They always complaining and nothing is enough.

I don't get these threads..
The only ones that would say such a thing about a PC or it's games are for the most part console users, am I right?

I would think that if a console user also has a (good PC to begin with and knows how to use it), there wouldn't be such bs threads going on.
Unaware of the fact that basically any console system can be emulated via software bios and rom on PC..
And the fact that console systems are basically low-end PC's to begin with.
Useless thread.. moving on..

Well I've been playing video games since before you were born. I have a gaming PC and a 360 as well. I've also worked in the games industry, as a game producer at a small development house.



People are entitled to their opinions. If somebody feels poor quality and quality control at launch is deserving of a zero, then so be it.



It wasn't good enough because it was not, in fact, fixed "in one day", literally or otherwise. The game is still full of glitches and now, for some reason, I can't play for more than about 3 minutes without the game locking up, necessitating killing it via the Task Manager.



Well, there's the real problem: You're far too leniant on a company that's selling a product that should, quite simply, work. It shouldn't require ANY amount of time trying to get the game to work. Do you know why? Because developers pay people (or don't pay them) to test games internally before they're released. And often they also have Beta testers who are more than willing to spend tons of time testing a game just so they get to play it for free ahead of its release date. And yet, with these common practices in place, id / Bethesda still managed to release a product riddled with glitches and bugs and have the nerve to actually charge people to play it.

Also, if you think you or anybody else could "destroy a game's reputation" by rating a zero on a forum somewhere, you place a lot more importance on yourself and the random posts of others. Games live or die by mass reputation. If a game has a bad reputation, it probably deserves it. If it has a good one, it probably deserves that, too.



You obviously don't understand how modern operating systems work, specifically Windows. One of the major advances of Windows, years ago, was that the hardware was abstracted from the software so that developers didn't have to worry about catering to a million different configurations. The software talks to the OS, which talks to the drivers, which talks to the hardware. If a hardware manufacturer writes a crappy driver, nothing for it will work properly, and they should fix it.

On the other hand, if a developer writes a crappy piece of software, the drivers shouldn't matter, because the developer and their software shouldn't be doing anything hardware-specific in the first place. And in those cases, the developer must fix the problem, because it's their problem.

People like you are the reason that mediocrity thrives in the marketplace, especially here in the U.S. If you're paying for something, it should work as advertised and expected. There's no reason for any alternative. And if the product doesn't live up to its promise, absolutely people should vote it down, both in reputation and by returning it / demanding a refund if the game doesn't work properly.

In fact poor ratings for sloppy releases are more fair than poor ratings for things like "I just didn't think it was that fun" because at least a sloppy release isn't subjective.

I've been playing games since Pac-Man standing in an arcade. I am one of those people frustrated that I have to do config surgery just to play a game, when my system will run any DirectX game. I understand if you had an unfettered experience, but upon installing the game clean, my experience svckED. ctd after intro every single time no matter what I do, config or no config, driver version: any....



No, it wasn't fixed. For you it may have worked, and tha'ts great...for you. You're one of those people that assumed that if it was good for you, it must be fine for everyone else. It wasn't.



Yes. I wasnt one of those people that threw a hissy fit, as you put it. But I am wondering where my 60 bones went and if I'll ever get past the intro. And no we dont have ourselves to blame because we pay the money to buy the games on PC. This money fuels more games, and when the developers make a mess out of the game, it's really their fault. The time has passsed for blame, my friend...it's just time to get this game fixed, whomever that requires.

I'm letting this thread run because it seems to be more about the much-bandied about but yet to ever occur death of PC gaming. Keep the platform bashing out of it, or it will get shut down. Don't call people trolls, don't tell people to "grow up". It's unneccessary and negates one's arguments to resort to lame insults.


Yeah, posts like this don't exactly help the Discussion either. Don't make posts like that. People complain. Period. It really has nothing to do with the platform they are on and everything to do with human nature.

To me, pc gaming is dead.

I too like everyone here started gaming ages ago, spent thousands of $ on building gaming rigs, upgrading vid cards, memory, psu, larger screens etc etc for every new game that promised stunning visuals. Big deal.

Three years ago i switched to console. Today i have both consoles available. Big deal too! In the beginning, yes i had some problems getting used to using a controller. But now, its not a problem.

I will never go back to gaming on a pc because on consoles, you actually get to enjoy playing games and not have to worry about the millions of tweaks just to get the game right. Its a waste of time. Just look at Rage's launch week on pc. What a mess. Bigger mess that its an id game.

Honestly, what each of us prefer to game on should not be a cause for argument or name calling. This is just sad. The bigger deal is a developer that chooses to put out a game across all platforms must make sure every platform is treated equally and fix all bugs or issues. A lot of the arguments between gamers about who's is better is because developers have screwed people and people are pissed.

So common guys, can't we all live in peace with each other? We're all gamers getting screwed by devs right? :wink_smile:

Just for the record, my comment was directed to the topic at hand, not anyones actual post here.

But it's also a hobby for some people to fiddle with their PC's and do all sorts of technical stuff, which a console won't let them.
Some people also just prefer the PC because of the keyboard and mouse, better graphics/resolution and framerate, while other would have to buy a new monitor just for the console because their current one isn't 16 : 9

True, but you give up so much that a PC offers just to have the convenience of popping the game in and having it load right away, at the end of the day I guess it all comes down convenience vs flexibility (and mods!).

I still do occasionally game on PC, just not as much as I use too. I don't believe mods should be the answer to fixing things. Mods are nice, but what if every developer decided that all flaws could be fixed with mods, so they never bothered to fix or improve anything. You're essentially paying for a bare boned game at that point.

css/CS , bf3 and sc2 speak of PC being dead?

hi

the current gen consoles were great six years ago...i actually got an xbox360 on launch day.


i remember there was so few 360's around and it cost big money...i was ecstatic.


the most i spent on a console was for my 3do around $800 Canadian.


i have a ps3 that my that wife now uses to play blu-rays.



the next gen consoles will be true 1080p gaming machines like the pc is.


regards


Sean

Man this is one ill-informed, paranoid post. Sorry to say.

Okay so, to compare my experience and history with yours real quick I'll just say I'm 31, have been both a PC and console gamer since I was very young rocking the Commodore 64 and Atari 2600. Was hugely into NES and N64, my Packard Bell 386 TURBO haha, and have tried to keep up with both types of games ever since. I currently own all 3 of the consoles, as well as a DS handheld, and I have a fairly snazzy gaming laptop (The ASUS G73, it usually does very well with just about anything I throw at it, usually...)

I have a warm spot in my heart for both types of games, but nonetheless over the years you might still have found me bashing consoles at certain points, at least certain consoles. There was a period of time where I was fairly anti-xbox, with the first xbox that is, because I had been greatly looking forward to Halo on PC and then it got grabbed by Microsoft and redirected to be a console title. That irked me greatly, and then salt in the wound came later when I felt that Thief 3 and Deus Ex 2 (just to give 2 of the more glaring examples but by no means the only cases) were significantly worse products than they might have been had they been PC exclusives, with console ports done later or not at all. I was right, about that, btw.

Still, I got over myself as time went by, I got an XBox, I loved Halo on that system, I enjoyed Thief 3 on PC despite it's flaws, I even managed to finish Deus Ex 2, and found some merit in it, even if it was by far the weakest entry in that series (Human Revolution is good stuff, I'm still working my way through it)

But anyway... I now stand before you someone who embraces games on any and all platforms. Still, when a game like Rage comes along and I know for a fact it fell far short of what it could've been as a PC exclusive, or a PC first title... it does irk me a bit. I guess that's the reality of the time we live in now, typically with a generation of consoles there comes a point where they get long enough in the tooth that PC games start to outpace them too much, so a little golden age of PC gaming comes along again, until the next round of consoles comes out. It's true that this time I don't really see that happening, because these consoles seem to be surviving longer than some of the previous generations, and the PC developers are too much enthrall to them to outpace them.

Whatever, as long as good games are coming out, no matter the platform(s), I'll be happy.

But to say that PC gaming is dead entirely is profoundly ignorant and short-sighted, and please realize that people have been saying that roughly forever... and they're never right. Sure, it waxes and wanes, sure, consoles are more appealing to most people who just want to pop it in and play... that's fine.

But games like WoW, Diablo 3, StarCraft 2, Valve games, other MMO's, still are much much stronger on PC than console, if they're on console at all. People will continue to own a PC, for their other purposes, and as long as you have that huge built in market of PC owners, developers will always be taking advantage of it. Steam is huge, even if it's very flawed.

I think it's very sad to see a gamer like yourself who has been so whipped into submission and lost all sense of consumer rights that you are cowering and telling us all to keep our voices down lest id software not develop for us again. Hey buddy, I've been a fan of theirs since Commander Keen as well, and with them through both their good games (most of them) and their bad (Quake 3) and I have no problem saying that my fandom is entirely contingent upon them continuing to do a good job. It's not blind loyalism. Nor should it be.

If they screw up, I will call them out on it. And please, get your facts straight. This was not fixed in one day. It was not even a problem isolated to PCs. I have the PC version and XBox version. my PC version *still* does not play the way it should, not even by a long shot in fact, so definitely didn't get fixed in one day... as for my XBox version? I finished the game on that platform, it played well enough for that. I still fell through the floor of the world once, and the texture pop, and quality of textures in indoor environments, was still MISERABLE on XBox as well. Walking around in the towns, or dungeons, and seeing the really really, really, really blurry bad textures on every surface take forever to very, very noticeably convert to slightly less blurry, but still really really bad textures... was completely jarring, stupid, and avoidable.

Please don't act like the console versions of this game were up to the standards of a modern game. I liked Rage, I had a lot of fun with it, but it remains a deeply flawed game ON ALL PLATFORMS. id software has been around long enough and has enough talent and resources they should have been able to put out a quality product with far fewer issues at launch on all platforms. I realize they were trying something a bit different with the textures in this game, but if the engine needed to have a different way of handling textures indoors, or close up, or they needed to toss out the "mega texture" thing entirely, in order to have the game up to normal, modern standards, they should have.

Enough ranting from me, peace out

it's better for whole geming thing a living PC platform . pc is the place that indie deveopers shine and get famous dead pc would hurt gaming world too badly .

Everyone has been saying PC gaming is dead for more than a decade now LOL. I'm a console gamer and I know for a fact this is bs. PC is still far and out advance, not just hardware wise but online content distribution wise (Steam most obvious of all) which consoles are still lagging behind. Games on PC have more attach rate because of mods and what not. Better and more options of 3rd party hardware for PC. Indie games is still king in PC because indie devs don't have to be at the Publisher's/Platform holder's knees to publish a title, they can just literally sell it themselves (Minecraft). MMO will always still be king in PC because consoles have a limited bandwidth that is set by their Platform holder. You can argue all the cons of PC gaming but the truth is, its still a model consoles are following and looking up to for improvements. PC gaming is not dead nor is it over.

/thread

Glad to see this post is still around and being discussed.

In my original post, I never said that PC's were INFERIOR to consoles. That, of course, is ridiculous. We all know current high end PC's are way more powerful than 6-7 year old consoles. The crux of my argument seems to have been lost in the 4 pages that followed. I am a PC gamer as well as a console gamer. Like I said in my first post, my PC gaming is something that I truly cherish will all of my heart and I have great memories associated with PC gaming. Hell, I still play Doom2 DWANGO maps on zDaemon.

My point is this: PC gamers are hardcoe. They usually understand the insides and out of computer hardware and software. This is why is boggles the mind when a huge AAA game is released with launch problems, the intarwebs are ablaze with mobs holding pitchforks ready to kill someone. PC gamers are definitely the most vocal gaming community, but it seems like you, of all gamers, should be the most understanding of driver / stability issues. I understand frustration, waiting 5-6 years only to have a non-working product installed on your SSD hard drives... but really... do we need to rate the game a zero? As the next generation of consoles arrive in a couple of years, PC gamers should brace for more console exclusive games. It's just a fact. It just makes sense for developers to develop for two set's of hardware and KNOW it will work 100% day one, instead of the usual gamble of developing for PC.

This attitude doesn't reinforce mediocrity.

And as PC gamers, if tinkering with your computer to make a game work is too much for you to handle, then maybe you should look at console gaming. I hear prices are dropping

You answered it yourself and I will stick on id for a moment...they are obviously the innovators of PC gaming and they ignore the hardcoe extreme PC gaming arguments for some reason. It is id that has not lived up to the expectations, not gamers. The hardcoe gamers know what id is capable of and they refuse to ignite the flame they once burned. I'm really saddened that id would ever even think about letting that happen to them.

the irony is killing me, hence the name rage. I think id is just trying to get back in the game (industry); and they want you to enjoy the game rage. So id stands behind the game for the consoles. Its easier to release the game for the console because of the hardware. So id will stand behind the game on the console because they know the full experience is there now. I think in time the game will look phenomenal on the pc (compared to the console) and Id will soon promote that. I own it on the pc and am using the beta drivers and im not having any issues other than popping, but i assume a gtx 460 would resolve this issue, compared to an 8800gt. ive seen some youtube videos of the gtx 460 and it looks promising.

Rage has no "Ultra" setting.

Do you actually know what you're talking about? Did you even play the game, or did you just turn up at the forums to troll and hate?

Unfortunately, there are some people that will just never get used to a controller no matter how long they keep trying, myself is one of those people.

The OPs point relies on the fact that somehow "tweaking" your PC will make the game work.. for a lot of people the game simply didn't work at all. I'm a long time id fan, but when I saw the previews coming in I just felt this was a step in the wrong direction.

My friend had an ATi card and it messed up the textures horribly for him, but all the patches and drivers didn't fix anything. He still can't play it properly, and he tried making his own config.

That aside though, that's not why I don't like RAGE. The reason I don't like RAGE is that it had a half assed anti-climix ending that was zero challenge. The game is extremely predictable in it's progression. Go to gangs hideout, kill them, complete objective. Outside of that there is no game, there are no events other then the Authority occupying the town, and it have no relevance in the end. Then there's the driving. Everyone gives this praise for being a "new direction".. where have you been? There's been so many driving games that involve shooting other cars it would take too long for me to list them. It's a gimmick if anything, there's no depth to it at all. Shoot the other car, watch it blow up, get cash for ammo.

If you're going to do a linear game, DO a linear game. Don't be half assed and create a game that's merely a number of nodes strung together by a path.

It's just not a good game. There's great gunplay and solid work on the enemy animation and tech, but if a friend asked me "What should I get? Rage or Battlefield 3?", I'd say "Spend your money on Battlefield 3, it'll keep you entertained longer, it looks better, and it's coop is better. RAGE, if it works, will be enjoyable when your shooting the enemy in singleplayer, and boring when you're doing anything other than that."

I really did try to enjoy RAGE, I played the multiplayer for 2 days before I got sick of it, it just didn't motivate me at all to play more of it. There was just no satisfaction in blowing up another car or picking up points. There is no real multiplayer as far as I'm concerned bar the coop.

The shooting was great but there wasn't enough of it. If it's primarily a shooter game why try to wrap it up in all this fluff around it, just do what you did in all other games, throw us in the thick of it and don't let up, and have a few areas that are interesting to explore off on the side.

It feels like it's trying to be two things, it wants to have the grandeur of Borderlands and Fallout, or any giant big open game, but it doesn't want you to explore that.
It creates this elaborate world around you but doesn't want you to look too closely at it, or explore it. It wants you so focused that the only thought in your mind should be "Do the mission, kill the guys, return home", yet the game is dotted with mindless distractions that don't really serve a purpose.
These are fine as a gimmick like the turkey puncher in Doom 3, but they shouldn't ever be a serious part of the game.

EDIT; on a further note, people had problems with BF3, but most of them have been overcome, and it hasn't damaged the reputation of the game. I wonder why that is..

People don't like being surprised and BF3 didn't really surprise anyone. The PC graphics are modestly better then the old, the single player is wimpy which everyone expected, and the multiplayer is good which everyone also expected. I've heard some people complain it isn't as good as the last game, but no major surprises.

Rage is completely out of left field. In just about every respect it is like nothing id has ever done before. People who wanted a classic id game were disappointed, those who wanted an open world were disappointed, people who wanted high resolution textures up close were disappointed, people who wanted a trouble free launch were disappointed, and on and on. Doing something really new and different is risky, but id needed to do something really new and different to break out of their old rut and experiment with new ideas. Hopefully we'll see the benefits in their future games including not least of all any possible sequel to Rage.

More fuel to add to the fire

About MW3--but it still applies to what's going on with consolitis desease affecting PCs---it really is the Dev laziness and attitude

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/why-your-pc-gaming-experience-is-being-throttled-by-aging-consoles/161

I pre-ordered Rage, but the game remained uninstalled after reading about the various PC issues. I waited until nVidia had released the WHQL 285 drivers rather than attempt to play the game with the beta drivers. With those installed the game runs flawlessly on my gtx570. My only real issue is clunky vehicle control after the elegant method used in Borderlands (which I was playing up until Rage was released).